I’ve been a mom for half my life.

I know, some of you are going to do the math and think that I’m delusional. And honestly that’s fine with me. So, having been a mom for 14 years, I have encountered the overwhelming guilt first hand. From the second I found out I was pregnant at only 14 years old, the people in my life loved to tell me what I could no longer do.

You can’t eat that, you can’t go there, you can’t wear that, you can’t drink that, you can’t go to that college, you can’t move, you can’t drive.
You can’t, You can’t, You can’t.

I lost my daughter, Cieala Leilani Jackson, at around 12 weeks. When I woke up after having D&C, I asked the nurse if I could hold my baby, if I could see it. I didn’t know the gender at that time. When she told me that I couldn’t hold my baby because there was no baby because it was ripped into pieces during the procedure….I vomited….twice. I begged her to tell me if it was a boy or girl. I just wanted to name my baby, to allow myself to have some closure. I sobbed, I screamed, I broke into a million little pieces and the guilt that I had in that moment is a feeling that cannot compare to any pain I had ever felt before that moment and cannot compare to anything I have ever felt since.

That is where it started. I began to look at the world different. I had been working at a small grocery store near Brack High School, AAA Salvage, for a little over a year. I would make about $80.00 a week. When I lost my daughter, I felt guilty for working there, so I went and got a job that paid more at the mall, because that’s what any mom would do. I started doing all of these things that a normal 14 year old would hate because in my head, I needed my daughter to be proud of me. I can’t have a part time job, I need a full time job. I can’t take easy classes, I need to take AP classes. I put so many restrictions on myself and limited so many aspects of my life that eventually I started to break down and do things that I thought a normal teenager would be doing. Then I would feel immensely guilty about it.

I was only 14, just a kid.

19 year old me not knowing what I was going to do with my life.

4 years later, I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter, Alani. Now at this point, I wasn’t even living at home. In a 4 year time span so many things happened and I had lived with a boyfriend for most of it. Once I escaped that abusive relationship, after a brief stint of living back home with my mom, I kind of just floated around. I stayed with cousins, my sister, friends. Sure, my moms house was “home” but I didn’t really LIVE anywhere. So, because I was so busy trying to do adult things because I felt this immense pressure to grow up, I ended up pregnant again. I remember telling Alani’s biological father that I was pregnant….worst experience ever. That is definitely a story for another time. Just understand that I did very adult things between the ages of 14 years old to 18 years old , got pregnant twice, lost my first child, carried the guilt of that loss and the guilt of not being a worthy mother with me for the next 10 years of my life and I continue to struggle with it to this day.

Here I am taking Alani out of the house for the first time

When I found out I was pregnant with Alani, I had just found out that I had been accepted to University of Houston- Main Campus, Baylor and several other universities. I was also in talks with an Air Force recruiter to join the Air Force. I guilted myself into giving up everything, going to community college and working graveyard shift at a fucking Jack In The Box because I thought that is what motherhood meant. I guilted myself into quitting school when Alani contracted RSV because my mom was driving us to and from SAC for my college courses in the cold November weather. She was hospitalized for a few nights and I never forgave myself for that. I decided at that point that school would have to wait until she was in school and I had enough money saved up to go to school full time. That never happened because I leased an apartment without being able to afford it because I guilted myself into thinking that Alani deserved her own room. I later moved out of that apartment because I couldn’t afford it, to my moms. Then, I found a house for rent and proceed to sign a lease there and stayed there for 4 years because my guilt told me that even though I wasn’t doing something I loved and even though I couldn’t go back to school because the bills were mounting, I had to have a backyard for Alani. I even stayed working at a job I hated until I literally could not get out of my car, I was crying so hard. I then came to my current job and proceeded to wither away for another 6 years.

All of that guilt encompassed me all of the time and led me down a destructive path where I got further and further away from what I wanted to do with my life.

No one should ever feel so much pressure that they drive their life into a hole just to keep the appearance of having it all together.

After 10 years of overvaluing everyone’s opinion of me and putting myself in a box, limiting my potential so that I could only be or do what other people thought I could be or do, I have finally stopped caring. See, what I did with that guilt was stop myself from living. I valued everyone else’s opinion over my happiness and it led to me losing a lot of hair, gaining a lot of weight, panic attacks and depression.

My beautiful girl- I will never stop becoming a better person each day

No one did this to me. I chose to give weight to other people’s opinions. I chose to limit myself based on what I perceived as the “right” way to be a mother. People will always have their own opinions, that is their right. They will always pass judgement, that is also their right. But we as individuals, are the only one’s that can give those opinions and judgement any power over our lives. I have lived a lifetime of doing what I think is right based on what other people tell me I should or shouldn’t do.

Now, I am finally done.

It took a lot to get here and I am not asking anyone to do anything. Of course we would all like support and acceptance but if that isn’t the case, should we lay down and bury ourselves in a guilt ridden life to please those around us? Absolutely not. I am asking that we all just take some time and re-evaluate our decisions.

Are you doing what makes you happy? Are you doing what is best for you? Do you do things that set your soul on fire? Or are you too busy concerning yourself with Instagram “likes” and Facebook friends that you find yourself spiritually and emotionally unfulfilled?

I invite you to re-evaluate the reasons that you do things. To rethink you “Why”. To give yourself the courage to stand up for yourself and to stop allowing the weight of other peoples opinions crush you. Allow yourself to fail every once in a while, enjoy it because failure is not final. Allow yourself room for mistakes and make those mistakes known. Your testimony could lead to someone else’s breakthrough.

I have a story and I’m going to tell it in a way that is brutally honest and genuine. My only hope is that someone reads through my experiences and they know that they aren’t alone. That their feelings are validated and that they can learn through my testimony that their current situation doesn’t determine their destination. At any time you can chose to pick up the pieces and start over. Every single breath you take is a chance to live your truth. Don’t waste it.

I’m reclaiming my time-

Krystalyn